Welcome to the official website of author Denise Hamilton.

Denise's new novel, Damage Control weaves an engrossing story of teenage friendship and adult betrayal, featuring a high-powered young woman in the crisis management world who gets swept up in murder and scandal involving a wealthy political family.

What if you had a best friend in high school you would have done anything for?

What if something awful happened on the beach one night, and that friendship dissolved like sand through your fingers and almost ruined your life?

What if 15 years later, the powerful father of your old friend hired you to defend him of a monstrous crime, plunging you back into the past and making you question everything you thought was true. Everything you thought was safely buried.

"Hamilton provides an appealingly fallible protagonist, a keen sense of place, and a little romance and, although her plot has more twists and turns than Mulholland Drive, keeps the adrenaline pumping to the final pages." -- Booklist

Denise is the best-selling author of five contemporary crime novels in the Eve Diamond series and The Last Embrace, set in 1949 Hollywood and inspired by the real-life disappearance of starlet Jean Spangler.

Denise is also editor of the Edgar award-winning short story anthologies Los Angeles Noir and Los Angeles Noir 2: The Classics. Her high-octane crime novels are widely praised for their gritty and glamorous portrayal of her hometown Los Angeles and have been finalists for almost every mystery award.

Prior to writing novels, Denise was a Los Angeles Times reporter and Fulbright Scholar so there are lots of interesting essays and articles on this site. She also writes a monthly perfume column for the Los Angeles Times Magazine. In this kickoff essay she confesses her darkest, most secret obsession.